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Mobile Apps
A mobile app is a software application developed specifically for use on small, wireless computing devices, such as smartphones and tablets, rather than desktop or laptop computers. #1 Mobile Apps Offer Better Personalization Personalization is about offering tailored communication to users based on their interests, location, usage behavior, and more. With mobile apps, it’s easy to treat users with a personalized experience. Mobile apps can let users set up their preferences at the start, based on which users can be served with customized content. Apps can also track and observe user engagement, and use it to offer custom recommendations and updates to the users. Furthermore, they can also identify location of the users in real-time to provide geography-specific content. #2 Ease of Sending Notifications For the last couple of decades, email has been the most widely-used business communication tool. Businesses have extensively used email (some almost abused it) to reach out to their users. As a result, email has lost the effectiveness it once had; its open rates and click rates have constantly dropped. Well, there’s no reason to worry. Enter mobile app notifications. The notifications are of two types: push and in-app notifications. They both are exciting alternatives for communicating with app users in a less intrusive manner. #3 Making Use of Mobile Device Features Mobile apps have the advantage of utilizing features of a mobile device like camera, contact list, GPS, phone calls, accelerometer, compass, etc. Such device features, when used within an app, can make the user experience interactive and fun. Moreover, these features can also reduce the efforts users would have to make otherwise. For instance, users completing a form on a banking app might need to submit their photograph for completion of the process. The app can let users take help of the camera of their mobile device to capture and submit a photograph. #4 Ability to Work Offline It is probably the most fundamental difference between a mobile website and an app. #6 New Branding Experience Since a mobile app is distinct from a company’s website, it has the liberty of offering a new branding experience to users. It means that the company can experiment with new branding styles for the app, which can be different from the regular brand style of the company’s website (or the company altogether). Going a step further, companies can build mobile apps specifically to transition into a new brand style for themselves. #5 Freedom in Designing Even with all the technological advancements in web designing, mobile websites have to rely a lot on browsers to perform even the most elementary functions. Mobile websites depend on browser features like ‘back button,’ ‘refresh button,’ and ‘address bar’ to work. Mobile Apps don’t have any of these restrictions. A mobile app can be designed with a lot of elaborate functions, based on advanced gestures like ‘tap,’ ‘swipe,’ ‘drag,’ ‘pinch,’ ‘hold,’ and more. Source Apps can use these gestures to offer innovative functionality that can help users perform a task better. For example, an app can let users move to a next or previous step using the swipe gesture. #6 New Branding Experience Since a mobile app is distinct from a company’s website, it has the liberty of offering a new branding experience to users. It means that the company can experiment with new branding styles for the app, which can be different from the regular brand style of the company’s website (or the company altogether). Additionally, a mobile app can also allow users to customize its appearance, as per users’ liking. This can further help in the personalization front of the app. Add-on: The concept of microsites work on similar lines. Microsites offer a distinct brand experience to users, as compared to their parent sites. They are often used to promote a sub-brand, an event, or a newly-launched service. Related Post: A Cheat Sheet on Using Microsites To Build Traffic #7 Users Spend More Time on Apps Mobile users spend 86% of their time on mobile apps and just 14% of the time on mobile websites. Moreover, the average time users spend on mobile apps is also increasing — rising by 21% in 2015 from 2014. #8 New Stream of Conversions If you’re looking to increase conversions, mobile apps can be a great medium to push users down the conversion funnel. Mobile apps can be used to acquire both top-of-the-funnel (ToFu) and bottom-of-the-funnel (BoFu) users. For instance, utility apps can bring-in ToFu users, which can be later nurtured into BoFu leads. On the other hand, apps like eCommerce already have BOTF users, who have a higher possibility of converting. Add-on: Since mobile apps are much more targeted in nature (through their content and utility), they can be used to tap specific users in the funnel. Mobile websites, in contrast, reach out to a diverse set of audience. #9 Brand Presence Users spend a substantial amount of their time on mobile devices. It’s safe to say that many of the users encounter the apps they’ve installed on their devices, almost every day. This regular encounter can be viewed as a branding opportunity for the apps. Even when users are not actively using a mobile app, they are still reminded of the brand associated with the app. The icon of the app acts like a mini-advertisement for the brand. #10 Apps Can Work Faster Than Websites A well-designed mobile app can perform actions much quicker than a mobile website. Apps usually store their data locally on mobile devices, in contrast to websites that generally use web servers. For this reason, data retrieval happens swiftly in mobile apps. Apps can further save users’ time by storing their preferences, and using them to take proactive actions on users’ behalf. Mobile App v/s Mobile Site — What Should You Choose? Developing both mobile website and mobile app for your business can prove to be a costly affair. You might have to choose one of the two channels, based on your budget and business goals. While both channels have their own pros and cons, mobile apps, especially, can help you get higher conversions. Mobile apps offer greater personalization and operational efficiency, along with multiple other exclusive features. Category:Team members